Wedding in Venice

Weddings in the Enchantment of Time: Discover the Garden of Hotel Palazzo dei Dogi in Venice

One of the oldest and most fascinating gardens in Venice is to be found in the Cannaregio district, belonging to the seventeenth-century Palazzo Rizzo Patarol which today houses the NH Collection Grand Hotel Palazzo dei Dogi.

Hotel wedding Venice
Hotel wedding Venice

From the sixteenth century this area – like many on the periphery of the city- was coltivayed with vegetable gardens, as can tell from the street name Fondamenta "Madonna dell'Orto".

It was necessary to cultivate rare botanical species in order to develop cures for diseases, as well as to prepare poisons that could be used against invaders, notably the Turks.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century Lorenzo Patarol, as well-known collector and author of a valuable three-volume Herbarium preserved at the Venice’s Natural History Museum, inspired by the classification of the French botanist Turnefort, decided to create a botanical garden. In it, “halophilous” plants, of the sort that live in a brackish environment such as the Venetian lagoon, were mixed up with white rose bushes and rare lilies, next to greenhouses that sheltered precious collections of fragrant orange and jasmine.

His nephew Francesco Rizzo Patarol continued with this scientific legacy, rearranging the garden according to the new Linnaean system. He enriched it with plants to the point of bringing it to about six hundred among trees and shrubs of free air, almost all exotic, new and rare, about one hundred and eighty species of rose among the most distinct, several of which are unknown in the gardens of Italy and perhaps in many others on the Continent with a very bizarre collection very extensive in its genus of variegated plants and leaves, many plants from the Cape and New Holland, as well as many other perennials and bulbifera plants both of full ground and on pots.

Cited by historians, botanists and apothecaries and - even considered one of the Venetian singularities to be referred to foreigners- this green space was so beautiful and rare that it even received a visit from the Austrian Emperor Francis I in 1815.

In 1833 the noble Giovanni Correr took over as owner, profoundly transforming the garden in homage to the prevailing romantic fashion: the botanical collection was restricted to a small near the loggia. The central area was occupied by a grove criss-crossed by paths that wound between ruins and rocks; behind the wall, bordered by an elegant battlement, the ice caveand the bridge were placed.

Today on a visit to this space set between land and water, you can still breathe the scent of the ancient botanical garden, and take the unique opportunity of understanding the evolution of this green place adjoining the Venetian palace.

Thanks to the collaboration with the Wigwam Club Giardini Storici Venezia and to atelier of archive documents, including the same Lorezo Patarol's Herbarium, it has been possible to discover the plants that were once there, and to draw inspiration from this enrich the garden of today’s NH Collection Grand Hotel Palazzo of the Doges with botanical collections of roses, bulbous plants, lilies, camellias, hydrangeas and viburnum that recall its history. A garden rich in history and passion, still able to communicate a fascinating and magical atmosphere.